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Meet College Football’s Bronze Medalists

Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon simultaneously tries to outrun Stanford’s Chase Thomas and the memory of the Cowboys’ Iowa State loss.

Four teams combined for a grand total of 162 points during Monday night’s two BCS bowls – Oregon vs. Wisconsin in the Rose and Oklahoma State vs. Stanford in the Fiesta. Only 10 separated the two victors from the losers. And both winning schools gave a nice reminder of how they stack up against the anointed, LSU and Alabama, who are set to play for the national championship next Monday.

Oregon opened their season against LSU, going in as the slight favorite and leaving with a 40-27 loss. The Ducks stumbled a second time later in the year against USC but finished as the Pac-12 champion, and they entered last night’s Rose Bowl, again favored, on the heels of a 95-year drought in Pasadena’s big game. What followed was a contest that saw five lead changes and a brutal ending: Wisconsin had just made it into scoring range when a last-second spike by quarterback Russell Wilson came a second too late, handing Oregon a 45-38 win.

The glorified track meet was the highest-scoring Rose Bowl of all time, with 1,129 yards gained by the two teams, 155 of them by Oregon freshman running back De’Anthony Thomas on only two carries (both of which went for touchdowns). Historical significance aside, the win also marks the end of a streak of BCS futility for the school that extends since the 2002 Fiesta Bowl and includes losses in the 2010 Rose Bowl and last year’s BCS championship. While there isn’t much of a case to be made for the two-loss Ducks as possible BCS champions in this current format—particularly considering their loss to LSU, which has already beaten Alabama—the impressive performance certainly makes them early top contenders for next year’s title. “If [LaMichael] James does an Andrew Luck 2011 or Matt Barkley 2012 and returns to school — don’t hold your breath that he will — Oregon and USC will be the Pac-12 co-favorites. Even if James bolts, the Ducks will still be the co-favorites,” Gene Wojciechowski writes for ESPN. “That’s because they still have quarterback Darron Thomas, still have running back Kenjon Barner and still have the fastest man in cleats, De’Anthony Thomas.”

Now we move to Glendale, Ariz., where Oklahoma State put away Stanford without taking a lead until overtime, and only then following two missed kicks—one to seal it in regulation, the next to go up by three in OT—by Cardinal kicker Jordan Williamson. (Williamson missed three kicks in the game, which is as many as he missed all season.) Despite Andrew Luck’s completing all but four passes on the way to 347 yards and two touchdowns (and one interception), the one-loss Cowboys’ season-long synergy between quarterback Brandon Weeden and presumptive NFL first-round draft pick Justin Blackmon was enough. Blackmon accumulated 186 yards and three touchdowns.

At least in the eyes of Blackmon, and CBS Sports’s Brett McMurphy, the win was sufficiently impressive to make a case for Oklahoma State as the best team in the country. “Oklahoma State has more quality victories this season than Alabama. Oklahoma State has a bigger wart, though. It lost on the road in double overtime to Iowa State, which according to Alabama and SEC fans is: The. Worst. Loss. In. The. History. Of. The. World,” McMurphy writes. “Basically, the argument against Oklahoma State is that one loss should erase everything else Oklahoma State accomplished this season, even though the Cowboys won the Big 12 Conference, which was rated by the BCS computers as the nation’s toughest conference.” Two BCS bowls remain before the Game of the Century Part II: Michigan faces Virginia Tech in tonight’s Sugar Bowl – we’ll have Rachel Bachman and Pete McEntegart live-blogging that one at 8:30 p.m. ET – and Clemson taking on West Virginia in Wednesday’s Orange Bowl.

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The close of the NFL regular season came with its rash of coach and executive firings—the Buccaneers’ Raheem Morris, the Colts’ Polians, the Rams’ Steve Spagnuolo—but it also gave us a finalized playoff picture. Wild Card weekend sees Denver taking on Pittsburgh and Houston drawing the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC, with the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots on bye. In the NFC, it’s Detroit vs. New Orleans (in a game that could feature a season’s worth of passing yardage) and Atlanta against the New York Giants; San Francisco and the defending-champion Green Bay Packers lie in wait.

So, what’s worth watching out for in the week leading up to the games? First and foremost in the AFC—aside from Tebow, of course—it’s the Steelers’ and the Texans’ injury situations. Pittsburgh just lost starting running back Rashard Mendenhall to a torn ACL, and Ben Roethlisberger has been hobbled by a bad ankle sprain. Meanwhile, the Texans have been playing rookie quarterback T.J. Yates for weeks now after Matt Schaub went on the IR, and now Yates is dealing with a bruise that, should it limit him against Cincinnati, might mean the appearance of Jake Delhomme – a scary notion in East Texas. The early favorites in the AFC certainly look like the top-seeded Pats and Ravens. The NFC, on the other hand, only has one clear alpha dog, the Green Bay Packers, and the likeliest candidates to prove otherwise are the staunch 49ers and high-flying Lions and Saints.

* * *

Yesterday, the NHL rolled out its marquee Winter Classic, this year featuring the top team in the Eastern Conference, the New York Rangers, and their bitter rivals the Philadelphia Flyers. The game proved worthy of the hype, with the Rangers and goalkeeper Henrik Lundqvist surviving a last-second flurry by the Flyers to secure a 3-2 victory. If possible, the 2012 Classic might have been the most anticipated one yet, in no small part thanks to the “24/7” HBO documentary that has followed the two teams leading up to the game.

But Ken Warren in the National Post has an interesting take on the game, which he considers an idealized version of a long-gone, if ever authentic, pond-hockey past. And he compares its media gleam to the relative ignorance in the U.S. of the world juniors tournament, where the United States crashed and burned out of medal competition last week. “The bronze medal from last year, the gold from 2010, and the increase in the number of American players selected at the top end of the NHL draft had fuelled realistic expectations that the U.S. could challenge Canada for top spot every year,” Warren writes. “Now there figures to be soul-searching behind the scenes, including deep questions about the selection process. That isn’t good news. There’s already limited interest in the tournament outside of Canada. A strong U.S. team is necessary in a competition with far too many embarrassingly overmatched teams.”

Comments (5 of 20)

Yes! all teams have a rough game now and then. The hype about Stanford kicker missing two field goals, Bama missed three against LSU, so LSU survived barely like they did against TN. Thank goodness for last minute actions, LSU and TN. I hope everyone in AL and LA enjoy the SEC Conference Title game (Number 2) again, maybe all conferences can have two title matches!

6:22 pm January 5, 2012

J Welborn wrote:

OSU defeated 8 top 25 teams, Bama only 3, Yes if Bama wins they should have to share a national title with OSU. Any given day a team can have one off game. Only one team is undefeated LSU. If Bama is so great they should have beat LSU by a wide margin. Bama has a good defense, but the offense is lackluster. I predict the hype of the big game will play out with low score and a boring rematch. The only team of stature Bama beat was Penn state and they are not that great this year. OSU had a tougher year and still played the day there school lost two coaches. So Iowa State played well that one day, big deal.

8:11 pm January 3, 2012

JJ Gildersneeze wrote:

Andrew: Nice try. You certainly CAN call the Ducks the Pac12 champs, because that's what they are. W/out probation, SC still had only the third best record in the conference. (Forgot about the mauling at the hands of the mighty 6-7 Arizona State Sun Devils?)

7:03 pm January 3, 2012

JJ Gildersneeze wrote:

Another factually-challenged Trojan... Anyone with Google and three seconds can confirm that Oregon had one conference loss and SC had two.

As for whether they would have won the title game had they been in it, well maybe. I think there a quite a few Duck fans that would have relished that rematch.

4:49 pm January 3, 2012

andrew wrote:

You cannot call Oregon the Pac 12 champions without mentioning that USC was the winningest, and would have won the title without probation.

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